was that the emailer was an admitted landlord, that bastion of productivity. Yep, I hate people who make lots of money and do very little for it myself.

So now Horatio Alger's a landlord and an investment banker. Who knew? I'll get back to rolling up my sleeves and doing the hard work of watching my dividends and rent payments roll in.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

the wealthy see it as a war. Except law is of course structured to favor elites, so it's very hard for regular people to fight back through legal channels.

Indeed illegal, violent opposition is what's needed, like assassinations of particular CEOs and other executives, of market fundamentalist propagandists, of certain right-wing politicians. Bombings of corporate headquarters would also be useful.

The point is a small organization of maybe just a few hundred dedicated people, willing to give their lives if necessary, could wreak havoc on corporations and their Social Darwinist ideology. How many people would care to invest in stocks if the company's CEO might be killed in a few weeks. . . if CEOs were being knocked off on a regular basis, or if the corporate headquarters might be blown up?

Guerrilla tactics are the optimum tactics for the weaker force in the fight. This class war being waged through legal and quasi-legal channels by the rich against the poor needs to transform into a physical war if the poor will have a chance to fight back. The system is too far gone to be fixed in any other way.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

satan's investment banker.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I don't feel sorry for the landlord one bit.

Conservatives and Libertarians whining about their hard-earned money (which they can make over and over again by going to work every day) going toward what it is really and should be a good thing for this country is akin to a toddler who had too much sweets losing control when the candy is taken away.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Another idiot who thinks Repugs are talking to - or taking care of- them. LOL
These people are so deluded they still think the Repugs policies are looking out for Their best interests. FYI unless you have hundreds of millions- they aren't. In fact you have to be a Sheik or Trust fund baby to even get an admissions ticket.
Hell the politicians are their employees too, working to secure their ill gotten wealth and act as their personal lobbists in the halls of Power. Their salaries and existent rely solely on their performance. John McCain works for Cindy!
these Asshole is even stupider because those who he just jacked the rate up on may move out. Whats better making a few buck less a month or Nothing? Dumbass!!
Of course that's the cultural mind set of Greed- never looking for longer term sustainablity, thus assuring you can maintain an income into the future. Take it all and Screw next year! Long Range Business planning is obviously not an attribute found in the Repug party, reason Wall Street Tanked. Take the dollar now, and don't worry about someone coming to demand the 40 you leveraged off it.What are they teaching in those MBA courses?
"Best & Brighteset"??? More like Dumb and Dumber.At least the mafia had long range business plan, not only for themselves, but an attempted to keep the Organization alive for future generations- something Wall Street never considered for a second.Make sure Joany gets her pony Now, fuck it if she and her kids have to pay for it for the rest of their lives.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I doubt if that person was a landlord. One cannot raise rents any time they want. Renters usually have lease with terms so I'm not sure how he raised rents on everyone..

That said, the class war is being brought out into the open by both sides.. Barney's tax on AIG workers is a perfect example. The death threats against thos workers is another and the fact that AIG felt compelled to take down their sign from their building in NY is another.

The socialist march on, union criminals are on the rise, corporate criminals are hunkering down - let the wars begin.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Owners of multiple dwellings don't make their own rules. That's not to say that he can't raise rents, but "mmediately" doesn't sound right. People have leases and the tenant and landlord both sign. Something is missing here. ANNA

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

He is the most dangerous of all the social strata, part working class exploiting his own labour, and small property owner, unable to compete with the major moguls of society, the real beneficiaries of the system who will probably swallow him up in foreclosure at the first chance they get and he is then déclassé. Leon Trotsky insightfully and accurately describes this strata with an literary elegance and seldom found in studies or treatise on class. It is eerily prophetic.
Forgive the bastardization... So much here so little space.

The rapid growth of German capitalism prior to the First World War by no means signified a simple destruction of the middle classes...the middle classes have lost the last shadow of independence. They live on the periphery of large scale industry and the banking system and they live off the crumbs from the table of the monopolies and cartels and off the spiritual alms of their professional theorists and politicians...The post war chaos hit the artisans, the peddlers and the civil employees no less cruelly than the workers...The pauperization of the petty bourgeoisie barely covered by ties of socks and artificial silk, eroded all official creeds and first of all the doctrine of democratic parliamentarianism...The sharp grievances of small proprieters never out of bankruptcy, of their university sons without posts and clients, of their daughters without dowries and suitors, demanded order and an iron hand.

The petty bourgeoisie is hostile to the idea of development for development goes immutably against him; progress has brought him nothing but irredeemable debts...The Nazi curse materialism because the victories of technology over nature have signified the triumph of large capital over small.
The petty bourgeois needs a higher authority, which stands above matter and above history and which is safeguarded from competition, inflation crisis, and the auction block. To Evolution, materialist thought and rationalism-of the twentieth, nineteenth and eighteenth centuries-is counter posed in his mind, national idealism as the source of heroic inspiration, Hitler’s nation is the mythological shadow of the petty bourgeoisie itself a pathetic delirium of a thousand year Reich. Personality and Class-liberalism and Marxism are evil. The nation is good. But at the threshold of private property this philosophy is turned inside out. Salvation lies only in personal private property. The idea of national property is the spawn of Bolshevism. Deifying the nation, the petty bourgeoisie doesn’t want to give it anything. On the contrary, he expects the nation to endow him with property and to safeguard him from the worker and the bailiff…Fascism opened up the depths of society for politics, What inexhaustible reserves they posses of darkness, ignorance and savagery. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums, aviators who pilot miraculous machines created by mans genius wear amulets on their sweaters. Despair has raised them to their feet, fascism has given them a banner. Every thing that should have been eliminated in the course of normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

they're blasting disco down below
he says, "I'm doubling the rent 'cause the building's condemned
You're gonna help me buy City Hall"

But we can, yes you know we can
but we can, yes you know we can
Let's lynch the landlord, man

#@!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

At least in some parts of the county it's illegal for a landlord to raise rent to cover a tax increase.

You should turn this polyp in to the authorities, or at least notify his tenants of his illegal activity, which he's confessed to.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I was on Fox News yesterday morning talking about efforts to re-regulate Wall Street and reign in executive pay


It should be REIN in like reins for horses. REIGN is like a monarch's time on the throne. They mean two different things. In the context the author is using (as in 'trying to control executive pay'), the correct use is REIN.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

After all, this is what Ann Coulter, Rush, Faux News, etc. have all been working towards for years.

Why is anyone surprised at how effective they have been? Has no one here read their history?

(No, not what passes for history in US public schools, but real history books that go into depth and don't gloss over things like the war between labor and management in the late 1800's and early 1900's, for example).

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I own a building in Chicago. I am not rich, I am a smart woman and I am appalled at the situation against the middle class. I am hurting for money, so I assume a lot of others are, too. But I need good tenants, and I want decent people living in my building with me, so I'm lowering the rents. I'd rather have an enlightened artist in my building than a worthless yuppie. The rich disgust me.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

When I was a kid in the late 60s-early 70s, I used to have "Love it or leave it!" and "Go back to Russia!" thrown at me all the time.

Funny --- these days, I'd love to tell the reactionary slumlord the same thing. He'd probably be happier under Putin's authoritarian kleptocracy, after all. ;)

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

...that this apartment owner part way up the economic ladder is taking out his anger on his struggling tenents, while not realizing that his economic trouble (if he actually has any) is due to those above him, who are doing to him and the rest of the nation what he is doing to his tenents. It is also damned depressing that this man, who owns several rental units, which puts him pretty high on the economic ladder, is still not even satisfied, let alone grateful, for his good fortune, and so prefers to "beat up" those who cannot defend themselves.

The following I posted elsewhere on AlterNet, but I think it is, in part, relevant to this discussion:

Whether or not Goldman Sachs is running point on the Great Wall Street Money Grab, a.k.a., the New East Coast Gold Rush (The -09'ers?), it should be obvious to anyone with a pulse that the executives at Wall Street financial institutions have nearly complete control of the government's attempt to "save" them and the economy – and thus, by inference, the rest of us.

Either way, the result is the same: enormous amounts of money taken out of the hands of those who actually MAKE something and given to those who do nothing but make money by moving money but produce nothing. Oh, sure, these financial institutions invest in brick-and morter America; but through "financial instruments" and predatory interest rates and fees, they guarantee that they reap the most benefits while companies that actually produce goods have their bottom lines compromised – which may be a partial motivation (along with their own greed) for manufacturing companies to resort to near slave labor via outsourced jobs.

The chasm between moneyed, politically-connected Wall Street and the rest of us has never been wider or deeper (or more impossible to cross); and should it continue to grow, all of America will eventually take on the atmosphere of some third-world countries, where massive slums surround a glittering financial center, and where the inhabitants of that center have to live in guarded fortresses and travel with bodyguards to their heavily-secured offices in armored cars or helicopters to protect themselves from the impoverished – and REALLY pissed-off – 95% of the population.

Is this what we want for America? An expansion into America's economic core of the stupid, insane, "get-rich-quick" "star system" promoted by Hollywood, bling-bling rappers and overpaid sports stars, and the belief that rich people are better and more worthy (and deserve ever more) than the non-rich? You may think I'm crazy, but I believe that a part of our trouble is that the the pop-culture "American Idol" concept of becoming rich and famous overnight is partially why the malfeasance on Wall Street is tolerated by the population at large, why we're not protesting in the streets BY THE MILLIONS the loss of our jobs, our pensions, our 401k's, our health security and an affordable education for our kids. In some way, subconciously, as much as we hate these bastards of Wall Street, we identify with them, in that we want to have their riches and opulent lifestyle. The pop-culture machine both glorifies that lifestyle 24/7 and teases us that maybe, just maybe, we can have it and become "better" than the teeming masses.

(High school students today, when polled about their career aspirations, most often said that they wanted to be, not some profession, like doctors, or scientists, or engineers, or lawyers, but simply, "rich and famous." This speaks volumes about what is amiss in 2009 America.)

The economic meltdown is mostly about the greatest level of theft and fraud in history; but it is also about a pervasive but disfunctional social psychology that tolerates it – and which helps to promote class warfare. Wall Street definitely needs an enema; but, along with that, our pop-culture society needs therapy. Badly.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

on PBS the other night. They were all standing at that line between renting and homelessness because of a series of rental property foreclosures. With the first foreclosure they'd lost any deposits they might have gotten back, then had to deposit anew at the next apartment, which was then later foreclosed, and so on. There comes a time when you have no more money for deposits, moving services, etc. None of these people ever did anything wrong, and yet no part of any stimulus or corporate welfare scheme was going to help them.

When we speak of the unproductive who leech from the government, when will we all realize that it's the corporatocracy getting the biggest handouts for producing the least good and doing the most harm, and those of us at the bottom paying for those giveaways.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

This clown is just another example of the poor stupid bastards that support the Republicans in every thing they do, even though in the end, they will suffer because of Repig policies, too. This guy is like some fool sitting in a tree sawing off the limb he is sitting on.

Idiot is just so stupid it's pathetic. Nominate this clown for a Darwin Award.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

We are aiming to take preferential treatment away from the rich, and even their tax load with that of others. Why should they get 39% write of for donations, and you and I get 28%?
Why should they be taxed on only 5% of their total income for SS, while you and I pay taxes on all of our income. I understand that they would then pay more into it than I, BUT, they earn much more than I, and they will recover more when collecting than I. Bigger numbers are just that, bigger numbers. But, the percentages should be the same.
10% of my pay, and 10% of their pay, still equal the same percentage, with bigger numbers boo hoo.
This would help with SS solvency immediately.
These guys at top levels are playing us at each and every turn. We've had class war declared on the middle class for decades, we aren't starting one, we are merely firing back finally.
And idiots like that fool that says he's raising rents, is probably earning less than the 250k that would see a tax raise. So, he's copping an attitude to save the likes of Rush Limpaugh from paying more than he does now.
Idiot, being led most likely by the rightwing noise machine. What he now deserves is 100% vancancy.
100% of nothing is nothing A hole!
Good luck with that.
We've seen example after example of Millionaires paying less taxes than their secretaries.
Ronald Reagan, payed zero taxes while governor of Calif, because he had a "ranch" that produced nothing. Sure, that's fair.....if you are a republican. They are quick to tell you that you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make a living, but, will expect you to support the country on your back, and send your child to fight a war that was not needed, and then avoid paying any taxes at all themselves while taxing your ass off.
What happened to that old saw about making a living off the sweat of your labors? Now they don't think that is worth payment. But, at the same time, "managing" a financial death spiral is worthy of massive obscene bonuses!
UNPLUG your heads and look around, it's time to listen to the public, and they are pissed !

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

FOUNDING FATHERS NIGHTMARE--STIMULUS

Thomas Jefferson pretty well covered much about our situation today in two quotes made by him over 200 years ago. Our founders fathers feared what we are living today:

1. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

2. "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."*

I don"t think the presidenr's clueless. I think he knows EXACTLY what he is doing. HE was tutored by communists and making a career of destroying the productive for benefit to the leeches. No, he knows what he is doing, alright.

STIMULUS deprives YOUR children/adult/vets of meds and leaves you to SILENCE the SCREAMS without meds rather than pass HR 219 AND 236 to protect SOC SEC for military and non-military and vets lockbox law and cola to protect medicare WITHOUT RAISING taxes or premiums , and WITHOUT CUTTING SERVICES.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Dose of reality has a point. BIG GOVERNMENT (socialist) NEVER equals BETTER life for any constituent, NEVER equals BETTER healthcare for any constituent. Big government means GOVERNMENT ACQUIRES the rights to destroy YOUR life because YOU weren't looking or listening to what was going on.

It is roughly only 9 percent of this Nation that are in REAL ESTATE troubles and ACORN was/is the SOURCE of that trouble. NOW??? NEW STIMULUS DEPRIVES YOUR RIGHTS AND WILL LEAVE YOU WITHOUT MEDICINE WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST. And, guess what??? ACORN gets MORE OF YOUR MONEY with which to BANKRUPT this Nation with QUICKER.

It took ACORN with the DEMS roughly 9 years to bring on this meltdown. NOW??? WASH SLUGS are robbing WE THE PEOPLE with this MADDOF VARIATION of a stimulus AND in under 8 years WE HAVE to pay that money back or we will be owned by foreigners whom subscribe to SHARIA LAW.

This STIMULUS needs to go. IT GIVES the government right to DICTATE TO YOU REQUIREMENTS OF ANYTHING (RELIGION POLITICAL ETC) IN order for YOU to get MEDICINE otherwise YOU ARE LEFT TO DIE.

And, for the RECORD EVEN if you meet all the SO-CALLED REQUIREMENTS the GOV WANTS to impose on WE THE PEOPLE?? If you are x percent sick they are going to DECIDE to let you DIE anyway. BECAUSE SOCIALISM/MARX/GLOB/FAC/COMMUNISM is only going to want to KEEP YOUR MONEY not make you WELL.

WE need to seek legal/legislative measures to get this stimulus out. however, this requires ALL WE THE PEOPLE to let our fingers do the clicking and make sure to FIND LEGAL/LEGISLATIVE measures to PROTECT OUR FREEDOMS.

Has anyone bothered to do their homework to find out whaaat ACORN IS??

familysecuritymatters.org had some info along these lines

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Time to get that stimulus and bailout kicked out of the water LEGALLY and LEGISLATIVELY.

stimulus deprives PUBLIC OF MED and healthcare so WASH DC SLUGS can re-decorate homeland security office sofa's whom were probably never used much anyway.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

iN ADDITION to the 255 million on new sofa's the stimulus buys WASH DC SLUGS.

THE stimulus spends millions on creating a new water park.

MEANWHILE....DISNEY'S shutting down parts of theirs because of recession.

time to seek to stop bailout and stimulus

go see at familysecuirtymatters.org

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Send this ammunition to your congress person. This is just a part of one article of many along this line to be found at: http://www.toomuchonline.org/
Back then, in 1940, the Nazis were marching in Europe, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was anxiously trying to rearm America amid Depression hard times.

“Not a single war millionaire,” the President flatly pledged in 1940, “will be created in this country as a result of the war disaster.”

Top U.S. corporate leaders of FDR’s day had other ideas. They mobilized to stop Roosevelt’s pitch for a stiff excess profits tax on corporate earnings. They actually refused to enter into defense contracts until Congress gave them a more business-friendly tax bill.

But then came the attack on Pearl Harbor, and FDR soon had the upper hand. In April 1942, just a few months into the war, Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent “supertax” on all income over $110,000 — the equivalent of about $1.4 million in today’s dollars — for couples filing jointly.

Congress, in the end, didn’t go along with FDR’s 100 percent tax, but lawmakers did eventually agree to a 94 percent top rate on income over $200,000, around $2.5 million in today’s dollars, and the nation’s top tax rate would hover around 90 percent, under Democratic and Republican Presidents alike, until 1964.

Over the course of these years of high taxes on America’s very rich, the Great Depression would end, World War II would be won, and the United States would usher onto the world stage the first prosperous, mass middle class nation in economic history.

FDR’s willingness — even eagerness — to take on the rich and powerful opened the door to all this success. Elected leaders in Washington today have yet to show anything close to that courage. The bailout executive pay limits Congress enacted last month and the AIG bonus tax the House adopted last week certainly do constitute positive steps, but neither goes nearly far enough.

The AIG bonus tax, for instance, won’t touch Joseph Cassano, the power suit who ran the AIG division that wheeled and dealed the company into $99 billion in 2008 losses. Cassano left AIG last March, but not before collecting over $300 million for his toxic labors. He gets to keep all that, even if the House bonus bill adopted last week becomes law.

The same story holds for the executive pay bailout restrictions Congress passed in February. These place a $500,000 limit on what companies that get taxpayer bailout dollars can deduct off their tax bills for executive pay. That’s a welcome move, but this limit doesn’t in any way impact Lockheed Martin, the defense industry giant that rakes in billions of tax dollars via government contracts.

Lockheed’s CEO, the company announced last week, took home $26.5 million in 2008. Under current law, Lockheed gets to deduct, on its corporate tax return, almost all that $26.5 million.

One member of Congress, Rep. Barbara Lee from California, last week introduced legislation to end such taxpayer subsidies for excessive executive compensation. Her new Income Equity Act, HR 1594, would deny all corporations tax deductions on any executive pay that runs over $500,000 or 25 times the pay of a company’s lowest-wage worker.

Lee, interestingly, had a similar bill before the last Congress. That bill went nowhere. Has the AIG bonus ruckus changed anything? We’ll soon see.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

But it was the Federal Reserve Act that started this process of moving away from industry and towards financial manipulation.
The FED Act was sold to the people, Congress, and President Woodrow Wilson as a way to prevent what they then called "the money trust" from further consolidating its wealth. What the people didn't know is that it was this very same "money trust" comprised of private bankers such as Paul Warburg, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan who actually created and drew up this Act, in utter secrecy, using false identities, in a private club on a private island by the ominous name of Jeckyl Island. Even all of the usual staff was replaced while these elites drew up the Federal Reserve Act. It was passed through the House, but got stuck in the Senate.

In the Senate this had become a controversial Bill, and as the Senate closed for Christmas vacation, Senators promised to take no action on this Bill.

However, someone either forgot (or was bribed to forget) to close the Senate session, and on December 23rd 3 Senators passed the Federal Reserve Act (which really should have required a Constitutional amendment anyway) by a unanimous vote of 3 Senators.
President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law in 1913, the same year the 16th amendment, or income tax amendment, was supposedly passed (many claim that it was never ratified by all the neccesary States, and there are other challenges to the law of taxing income from labor, which the Supreme Court declared was not income but private property. It's easier to understand this if you take away paper money for a minute. Let's say, I agree to paint your barn, in exchange for a pig. Now, I'm trading my time and energy to paint your barn. When I'm done, and you give me that pig, it's not income, it's my private property now.
"income" as defined by the Supreme Court is profit, such as is derived from capital and corporate activity: trading stocks, flipping houses, etc. But income from labor was a trade--the laborers time and energy traded for--whatever. Of course, money is how this trade is completed, but it doesn't alter the fact that it's not profit but personal property.

Anyway, after President Woodrow Wilson had time to think, he had this to say about the FED Act: "I am a very unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. We are no longer a government by free opinion and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
--President Woodrow Wilson, 1919.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

What's funny about this, based on what I've read about real estate values in Cincinnati, is that I'm willing to bet his multiple units there are no more than the cost of my single family home in Southern California - which is to say, the guy is not "rich" and will probably himself benefit from the tax cuts. But, being a Republican, he's hasn't figured that out.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The angry fearful comment is equivalent to "Let them eat cake" arrogant people like this man can't possibly know that his $$$ will not begin to protect him as all the systems continue to crash. Should he find himself on the other side of things he most likely will be the loudest crybaby.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Since when does journalism consist of "state sweeping thesis, cite one anecdotal example, collect paycheck?"

To put it mildly, Mr. Sirota has not made his case. He not only leaves too much unsaid, he leaves *everything* unsaid.

What a waste of a good headline.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The really virulent anger is actually not coming from those at the top. It's coming from those who wish they were at the top, are afraid they will never get there, and view opportunity as a zero sum game in which everyone who seems to have, or be about to get, anything must take whatever it is from a pool that now means it's gone.

I'd say "redneck," blue collar southern men, gun lovers, religious nuts, etc. but that's both too restrictive and too prejudiced, because this rage is probably closer to home than many of us would prefer to believe.

It's the same phenomenon that has made so blue collar working people vote "Republican" - in complete opposition to any rational analysis of their own self-interest, economic and otherwise.

And you can't argue with this anger, because it's not rational or "cortical." It's coming straight out of reptilian hindbrain survival instincts and inchoate limbic fear, anger & competition. Ironically, the only emotion that transcends this, and that's actually capable of defusing this angers ... is Love. That's easy to say, and most times it's impossibly difficult to do. And sorry, fellow travelers, this is our job.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Interesting. I have never heard anyone use those exact words to describe why they raised a rent or other fee, etc, but I have used it is practice.

If there is any blindness in what we call a "class war," it is that people who are affetced are powerless to respond. I for one am sitting on the sidelines and generating no income to be taxed. Obama won't be in office for ever.....perhaps 8 years at the most. Then he can retire back to chicago and live off all of us until he signs his first $50MM book deal.

Let's make sure he is TAXED.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]